Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Questions by Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor
Answers by Kate Paiz, Senior Producer of DDO, and Stephen Muray, Lead Designer of DDO

Without Dungeons and Dragons, the monolithic industry of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games would not exist. That conclusion can be drawn rather simply; without the influence of D&D, many online game developers would never have attempted to create their games in the first place. A vast number of early developers credit their first games to being “simple D&D clones,” yet now they’re taking that knowledge and creating vast new worlds of sword and sorcery.

In an ironic twist of fate, Dungeons and Dragons has found a new place in the online marketplace, this time in the form of Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, a game that has influenced many a tabletop gamer to join the online masses in hunting down enemies and completing quests. Coming up on their second year in existence, the folks at Turbine took a few minutes to talk with Ten Ton Hammer’s managing editor, Cody “Micajah” Bye, about the future of their game and where the title is heading. In the 30 minute conversation, Cody and the developers discussed Module 6 (slated for January), the Monk, Half-Orcs, other new classes, an invading devil army, high-level spells, and a whole gaggle of other D&D items of interest!

(Editor's Note: The question concerning Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, and Monks has been edited for clarification purposes. During our conversations it was clear that the Monks were to be released before the Half-Orcs and Half-Elves, but it was not absolutely clear in the transcript. Changes have been made to the question to reduce confusion.)

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Ten Ton Hammer: Your two year anniversary is coming up very soon (late February). Should players expect anything big to be released around that time?

DDO is closing in on its second anniversary.

Kate Paiz: We’ve got a few things that we’re very excited about in the works, but we’re not really ready to talk about them just yet. There are a number of items that we’re very enthusiastic about; we’re hoping to release a new system along with new content for the players. The anniversary period should be pretty fun.

Ten Ton Hammer: From what I can gather, you are planning to release a large new update in the very near future. Can you tell us about this?

Kate: Absolutely. Our next release is going to be Module Six, which will be our fifteenth live update. The module is called the Thirteenth Eclipse, and it’s scheduled to release sometime in January. In this update we’re going to be introducing a completely new storyline centered around the invasion of an army of devils into Eberron. The players are going to have to combat the devils on an all new landscape called the Veil of Twilight as the Plane Shavarath is being interwoven into the very fabric of the player landscape.

Steve Muray: We’ve got a bit of an advantage in the Eberron campaign setting in that planar travel is very easy for the players. The players will be able to take the fight directly to the army of Aritreckos (excuse the spelling). You’ll be able to face off against the Barbazu (the bearded devils), and the armies heavily armored shock troops.

Kate: One of the things we’re really excited about in Module Six is the raid that is going to be introduced into the game. We’ve determined through player feedback that our gamers are really looking for an activity that is open to all levels and player types. Therefore the raid is going to be much more of a total experience rather than one singular fight that the characters take part in. There will be a variety of areas that you’ll fight through with a whole collection of mini-bosses that you will have to fight through.

As Steve mentioned, the Barbazu is going to be one of the lieutenants in the army and players will also encounter an Orthon as well, which is an incredibly brutish demon killer (the devils hate demons) and very tough to beat. Both of these lieutenants will be stepping stones on the way to the overall raid boss, which we’re trying to keep under wraps for the time being.

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The raid, according to the developers, will be more of an experience than an encounter.

hat said, the whole raid is going to be a much bigger experience and will hopefully be open to a larger variety of players.

Steve: I’m very excited about our new raid. It’s really an encounter for everyone and it’s the easiest raid to get into since Tempest Spine. On top of that, the raid is significantly lengthier and more complex than many of the previous raids. I’d describe it more as a raid zone than a simple raid encounter.

We’ve also gone into a lot of effort to allow players to customize the loot that they’re going to be getting from this raid using eldritch sites as a prototype for our upcoming crafting system. It’s very flexible; there are hundreds of thousands of permutations of raid loot. This allows everyone to acquire exactly what they’re looking for out of this raid.

Ten Ton Hammer: As a general Dungeons and Dragons question, have devils been explored in the Eberron campaign setting previously?

Steve: There hasn’t been very much so far. The Plane of Shavarath, however, is sort of like Eberron’s take on the Blood War – the general conflict between the devils, demons, archons, and eladrins where they’re fighting their eternal war on the Plane of Battle. We found that the Plane of Shavarath would be an appropriate place for this encounter. After that’s been established, we can expand the player experiences from there.

Ten Ton Hammer: Staying on the general D&D question line, are you planning on exposing the player base to anything different for 4th Edition? Are you changing anything up?

Kate: We’re definitely interested in exploring the new game once we get all the details from the new game and what that is going to entail. However, we don’t have any specific changes in mind, and that’s going to be a decision that we’re going to evaluate a bit closer to when the 4.0 rule set is going to be released.

Ten Ton Hammer: So you’re not looking for a general change of the game on the same date of the 4.0 release?

Kate: No, we’re not looking to make a simultaneous release.

The developers aren't looking to adopt 4th Edition rules right away.

Ten Ton Hammer: You don’t want to make changes when you don’t even know if the new rule set is going to appeal to gamers or not.

Kate: Exactly. It’s extremely important to us to get feedback from our player base and then making changes to our game that the player base is interested in seeing. A lot of what we are focusing on this year is continuing that core Dungeons and Dragons experience where we’re going to be looking at the Monk and the Half-Orc throughout the year.

We want to continue that tradition of great D&D experiences, but we also want to get feedback from players and make sure that the game we’re building is the game that they really want to play. Like many of the changes that we’ve made in the past two years, we really want make changes that the players think are good alterations.

Ten Ton Hammer: The Half-Orc and the Half-Elf races are what you’re looking to introduce after the Monk, correct? (Editor's Note: Changes have been made for clarifcation, see top of article.)

Kate: Right. They haven’t been released yet, but we’re planning on releasing them in the late summer or early fall of 2008. Our top priority is obviously the Monk, but the two races [will be introduced right after the Monk]. Players really want to get that strength increase from the Half-Orc racial type.

Ten Ton Hammer: Now that you have finished with the Litany of the Dead series, what will you be releasing between your full modules?

Kate: In December we’re really focusing on our holiday events. There are certain drops that can be traded in for special holiday-type items. We have jelly cakes that drop in different planes, along with other festive items like candy canes. I think that the event schedule begins on December 3rd, and it’s going to run for the entire month.

The beginings of a crafting system are being implemented in Module 6.

The anniversary content will hit around the time between Module 6 and Module 7, so hopefully players will have plenty of content to play with between the big releases.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are crafting and housing coming into the game any time soon?

Kate: We’re definitely going to have the beginning elements of a crafting system in place for Module 6….

Ten Ton Hammer: In the customizable weapons?

Kate: Exactly. We call it a prototype, because we want to insure that we’re creating a crafting system in a way that feels true to D&D and also true to DDO, which are two understandably different venues. We want to get this prototype out there, get people familiar with the basic benefits of the system, then grow the crafting process with a bigger release after we’ve taken a lot of player feedback into account.